I always keep a few Venn Diagram handouts tucked away for my classes!
Venn diagrams are a a great tool for getting students to organize their thoughts for comparing and contrasting ideas. The structure is good for younger students to begin to think more critically and for older students to use as a reference when preparing a comparative essay.
After introducing the structure, I’ll jump right into an interactive example on the board. If your classroom doesn’t have a whiteboard projector, you can make due with red and blue whiteboard markers! Get students up and writing! This gives them the chance to mingle, correct each other, and raise the energy.
After a practice run with a simple topic, I’ll guide students through a brief discussion, eliciting responses with Wh- Questions to dig deeper into the topic. Once everyone has shared some thoughts, we’ll switch to solo or pair work to prepare new Venn Diagrams on printed handouts. After about five minutes, we’ll go back to the board and then back to discussion.
This is a great way to compare old and new content, to review the main ideas of a reading, or to prepare students for a writing assignment.
But enough with introductions! Give me the good stuff!
Included in this post is a big resource pack:
A Google Slides presentation:
You can view the presentation here. As a viewer, you can copy (ctrl + a, ctrl + c) the slides to add to your own presentation. I quit using PowerPoint, but it’s easy enough to convert a Google Slides presentation to PPT!
The presentation includes basic instructions, examples, student interaction slides, and printable templates:
Ready-to-print PDFs:
In my opinion, square Venn Diagrams are superior for printouts as it is easier to write neatly within square boxes. As such, I don’t actually use circular diagrams for handouts! Feel free to make your own with the image resources further down below.
| Venn Diagram | One-per-page | Two-per-page | Four-per-page |
 | A4 / Letter | A4 / Letter | A4 / Letter |
 | A4 / Letter | A4 / Letter | A4 / Letter |
Scalable vector images:
Enjoy the lossless delights of these Venn Diagrams in SVG format!
Vector images can be resized to ANY dimensions without a loss in quality. To resize these vectors, you will need a suitable image editor. I fully recommend Photopea, a Photoshop clone that can be run in your browser (I recommend Google Chrome).
To resize a vector in Photopea:
- Download the vector image to your computer.
- Open (ctrl + o) the vector in Photopea. (File > Open > Select .svg)
- Resize the image (alt + ctrl + i). (Image > Image Size…)
- Choose any dimensions you like and select “OK”.
- Export the image. PNG is transparent. You can also export directly to PDF for printing. (File > Export As…)
- Print and enjoy!
I’ve also rendered some 2400px transparent PNGs for your convenience:
| Venn Diagram | Transparent PNG | Scalable SVG |
 | Download | Download |
| Download | Download |
 | Download | Download |
| Download | Download |
That’s everything! I hope this Venn Diagram resource pack is useful for your classroom!
